WhatFinger


He will also designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, which has the mad mullahs promising a "crushing" response.

Trump speech today will certify Iran's non-compliance with nuclear deal



It's hardly news that Iran in not in compliance with the awful nuclear deal Obama and Kerry negotiated with the mad mullahs. It's hard to imagine a more inept all-around performance by a U.S. administration. First they agree to a deal that requires almost nothing meaningful of the Iranians, then they look the other way while Iran somehow manages not to comply with even that. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that Obama and Kerry were trying to harm America's strategic interests by not just agreeing to, but doggedly pursuing, this awful deal. But who would want to do that apart from America-hating leftists who think the U.S. is worse than terrorist-sponsoring fanatics?

All Donald Trump is going to do today is stop pretending Iran is in compliance

Oh. Right. All Donald Trump is going to do today is stop pretending Iran is in compliance. Oh, and he's also going to make it official U.S. policy to acknowledge the truth about Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which Iran isn't going to like one bit:
Mr. Trump’s speech on Friday will start what officials expect to be a lengthy diplomatic process to negotiate ways to strengthen the Iran accord, first with European officials and perhaps eventually with Iran, either by revisiting the accord or by enacting related but freestanding agreements. Among the U.S. concerns, the Trump administration has criticized the Iran deal for limits on Iran’s nuclear activity that eventually will expire—known as “sunset clauses”—and has faulted the agreement for not addressing Iran’s ballistic missile program. European ambassadors in Washington have spent time in recent days meeting with U.S. lawmakers to express their willingness to discuss U.S. concerns about Iran and even the agreement, but that the U.S. must first make clear it will abide by the deal.

Support Canada Free Press


Other countries also have expressed concern about the IRGC

French President Emmanuel Macron last month floated the idea of supplementing the agreement with separate pacts to “control Iran’s ballistic [missile] activities, and to govern the situation after 2025,” when the deal’s limits on Iran’s nuclear work start to expire. Other countries also have expressed concern about the IRGC, the elite military organization that reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has a command structure separate from Iran’s traditional armed forces. The IRGC was established following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and has grown to dominate Iran’s economy, with holdings in property, oil and gas and telecommunications. U.S. officials estimate the IRGC controls as much as 50% of Iran’s economy. Mr. Trump is expected to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group under an executive order that was created after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to target terrorist financing. It would not be classified as a foreign terrorist organization under more punitive U.S. laws, officials said.

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that so much of Trump's foreign policy team seems to want to stay in the deal

It's not as if Trump is taking some outlier position by saying Iran isn't in compliance. Even the French know this is the case. Maybe after Batanclan and Charlie Hebdo the French are a little more serious about terrorism than they were in the Jacques Chirac days. It's too bad it took that to wake them up. It's disappointing, but not surprising, that so much of Trump's foreign policy team seems to want to stay in the deal, even though they know how awful it is. This is bureaucratic inertia at its most putrid, as the practitioners of realpolitik always seem to follow their reflex to seek "stability," even if the only thing that's stable is the proliferation of evil, violence and murder. This is one of the reasons Trump won. Official Washington gives lip service to the idea that certain things need to change, but almost never seizes real opportunities to make those changes happen because that brings too many complications, and it's hard enough pushing papers around all day without having to deal with actual change. Why make anything actually happen when you can simply "take stands" and issue sternly worded statements?


The real reason the Beltway feared a Trump presidency was that they were afraid he would change things other Republicans only pretend to want to change

Whatever his faults, Trump does not think like that. When a state of affairs is ridiculous and absurd, Trump will put an end to it if he can. Not only that, but he'll come out and tell the country what's really going on and how insane it is. How long have things like White House leaks, or Senate paralysis, or budget insanity . . . been Beltway realities that everyone simply accepted? Apparently the understood Republican approach to these things is to vow to change them, but only pretend to really try once you get elected. Actually changing them will upset and inconvenience too many people. The real reason the Beltway feared a Trump presidency was that they were afraid he would change things other Republicans only pretend to want to change. The real reason they hate his tweets is not that he calls people names, but that he might use it to tell the public what they're not supposed to know about how Washington really operates. Having said all this, we're not actually out of the Iran nuclear deal yet.This is a step toward that, but it's only a step. The Beltway will try to do everything it can to make sure Trump takes no more steps toward actually ending it. If the public understands the stakes here, it will not put up with that.

View Comments

Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.


Sponsored